More flexibility and faster EU electricity market integration needed to shield consumers from price volatility and support the clean energy transition

ACER’s 2025 electricity monitoring report reviews progress in integrating EU electricity markets. It examines forward, day-ahead, intraday and balancing markets, and identifies where rules and projects are delayed.

This year’s edition also highlights weather-driven price volatility, which occurs when unusually low renewable generation coincides with higher-than-normal demand due to exceptional weather conditions.

What trends did ACER find in 2024? 

• EU market integration brings value and helps mitigate high electricity prices.
• Price volatility shows that more flexibility is needed.
• Long-term markets remain illiquid, limiting investment signals.
• Cross-border integration reduces costs, but project delays persist.
• Balancing integration generated €1.6 billion in welfare gains.
• Forward markets lack depth; Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) are growing but vary widely in design.
• Day-ahead integration is consolidating and intraday markets are evolving.

What are ACER’s recommendations? 

ACER points to several priorities that are key to resilience:

• Reinforcing flexibility by investing in demand response, storage and backup generation.
• Accelerating delivery of delayed cross-border projects through timely completion of interconnectors and adoption of flow-based capacity allocation in intraday markets.
• Broadening transmission system operators' (TSOs') participation in balancing platforms to reduce costs and volatility and ensure more efficient system balancing.
• Strengthening forward markets with more active long-term trading and well-designed PPAs and Contracts for Difference (CfDs).
• Moving to flow-based allocation in the intraday timeframe to ensure efficient capacity use and reduce congestion-related costs.
• Enhancing monitoring and enforcement to ensure rules are applied consistently and consumers benefit.

Check out ACER’s interactive electricity dashboards, with latest data up to Q3 2025. Next update in January 2026.